


Life Will Out

by Indigo2831



Category: 9-1-1 (TV)
Genre: Emotional BUck, Emotional Hurt/Comfort, Episode Tag, Firebaby, Fluff and Angst, Gen, Mild Hurt Buck, Mild Hurt/Comfort, Pregnant Maddie Buckley, Protect The Buckleys 5Ever
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2021-01-29
Updated: 2021-01-29
Packaged: 2021-03-15 20:49:12
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,925
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/29070573
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Indigo2831/pseuds/Indigo2831
Summary: Tag to 4x01 and 4x02.  Maddie Buckley misses her family, so she decides to do something about it.  Fluff abounds.
Relationships: Evan "Buck" Buckley & Maddie Buckley
Comments: 10
Kudos: 59





	Life Will Out

**Author's Note:**

> I wanted to write a cute and fluffy tag for the first two episodes of the season that involved Buck and Maddie. Please let me know what you think.

A steaming cup of tea appeared at the desk as if conjured there by a wizard. 

Maddie stared at the styrofoam cup as it steamed innocently, and was imbued with a strange, irrational rage. 

Josh’s eager, soft brown eyes appeared above her station, nose and mouth covered with a mask. “Maybe you should take a break, stretch your legs?” He suggested with this new fluffy tone that it was more irksome than nails on a chalkboard. 

Maddie clenched her teeth, picked up her tea, and walked, nay waddled, out of the call center. 

Their 911 call center had its own courtyard that volunteers and do-gooders had outfitted with flowers, a meditation space complete with a vine-entangled pergola and automated water sounds and color messages written on prayer flags. Maddie just leaned against the brick building, tore off her mask with a groan of frustration and relief, and tossed her tea into the bushes. 

Only 20 weeks in, she was already exhausted of the coddling, of the separation from her family, of the death. She was pregnant, and somehow that meant she needed to be pampered and coddled. And exiled from her family. Her phone buzzed just as she was about to scream just to release the pressure.

“🚫📺” said Buck’s text.

Instead, she growled, ferocious and primal. This was a part of the 118’s new warning system for the mother-to-be. Translation: Buck had to do something incredibly dangerous in the pursuit of saving lives, and he didn’t want Maddie watching the news and getting upset. Like the fragile creature she was. 

Scoffing, Maddie found it in a few swipes of the thumb: Buck walking on a bus wedged into a high-rise as surefooted as a mountain goat. Buck doing complicated moves on the harness. The flame-over explosion a few minutes later. 

Anger welled from deep within, molten hot and burning like lava. She hadn’t seen her brother or her boyfriend since the start of the lockdown, and this was beyond untenable. What was the point of having the family she always wanted if she so disconnected from it? 

The next three hours of her shift passed in a blur of calls, thankfully, it was mostly people who were breathless with anxiety and needing a connection and reassurance, which she was happy to provide. Though, there was a part of her that yearned to be in nurses scrubs and back in the ER, putting her skills to good use. She had begun the process of getting her California nursing license when the pandemic hit, and her laidback boyfriend became a raw nerve of worry and concern. There were so many unknowns with COVID, and Maddie couldn’t risk her life or her baby’s life by returning to the ER. She still found fulfillment in dispatch, and being at 20 weeks and growing by the hour, she was grateful she had a job where she could help people and still sit in a comfy chair. 

Maddie finished her shift and left with a rare determination. She picked up an order for a half dozen pizzas, cracked the seal priceless N95 mask she kept for emergencies, putting it on under her pretty sparkly one, and headed into the 118. 

Before she even made it to the locker room, the pizzas were liberated from her arms by desperately hungry firefighters and EMTs with a mask-muffled thanks. Buck straggled out from the locker room in an aborted jog. Her little brother was splattered in mud, shoulders and overly styled hair drooping from exhaustion and carrying that blissed-out buzz in his eyes that always followed a big rescue. “What the hell are you doing here?” He asked, hastily pressing a mask to his face. “Maddie, it’s not safe for you to be here…”

“Don’t say it,” she warned. 

“...especially when you’re pregnant.” 

“You said it,” she seethed. 

Maddie fought the urge to slap her brother. Blisters were already forming on his neck and the slope of his jaw, and the last thing her hospital-prone little brother needed was an infected burn during a pandemic. 

Maddie crossed her arms over her chest and scrutinized Buck. Beyond the sapphire twinkle of adrenaline, she also found anxiety and haggard exhaustion. She tilted his head to the side, hissing at the flashburns there. “I’m so tired of being coddled like I’m some kind of damsel in distress! I’m pregnant, I’m not broken.” 

Chimney, who’d been wringing his hands and hovering anxiously on the edge of the fray stepped in. “Babe, I think we’re just trying to help. This is uncharted territory for us all.” 

Maddie glared but didn’t look at Chimney. “I’ll deal with you later.” 

There was a round of trash-talking and whooping from the firefighters watching from the loft.

“Okay,” Chimney faded into the negative space between the trucks. 

“I know how! A registered nurse, remember? If one more person treats me with the ‘pregnant lady’ gloves, I’m kickin’ them in the sack. I’m _making another person_ , my body is making bones and an immune system. I have heightened hormones and proteins and senses, and it’s all designed to protect me and my kid. Something none of you neanderthals can do. You can’t even go to the hospital when you get burned.” 

“Hen can treat it,” Buck said softly.

“Leave Hen out of this,” Hen yelled from the lofted area.

Maddie glanced up at her friend, who was grinning and watching the show with the rest of the 118. 

“Which one’s yours today, Hen?” She gestured to the pristine ambulance parked next to a ladder truck that was being washed of mud and debris. “I’ll be quick.” 

Maddie snagged Hen’s triage bag from the rig and dragged Buck outside and to the side of the 118. They didn’t have a meditation garden, but the city had created an outdoor gym and poured concrete seats. She gestured to a row of them that faced each other and dropped the bag between them. 

“You didn’t feel this until it was too late, did you?” She asked.

Buck seemed fascinated by Maddie putting on gloves and soaked sterile gauze pads with cool saline. The skin of his neck was taut and baking. With practiced hands, she cut the seam of his soiled t-shirt and soaked the red and peeling skin carefully. “No, I didn’t. The fuel from the bus flashed over. There was a house of imprisoned pregnant women...” 

Maddie raised her eyebrows at that, but let Buck stumble and stammer, finding and acknowledging his emotions along the way. The burn cream can next. She slathered it on carefully, using the pads of her gloved fingers and a deft, delicate touch to navigate the skin around the blisters. “This is gonna scar, Buck.” 

“Add it to the list.” 

The burns weren’t in an optimal place, but she bandaged she could loosely bandage them with strips of gauze and a careful application of tape. When she was done, Buck’s head was drooped, elbows braced on his knees. His hands trembled in his lap. 

“Aww, Buck,” Maddie said. 

She took her gloves off, and reached out to lay hands on her little brother for the first time in nearly four months. The last time she’d seen him had been at a brunch with Albert, Hen, and Karen to tell them he was going to be an uncle. She knew how lonely he’d been, isolated by injuries and turmoil and depression he wouldn’t admit to, so she tried to make it as special as inclusive as she could with Uncle-To-Be t-shirts and a framed picture of the sonogram. He’d beamed at her the entire day, shedding tears with unabashed pride. 

When she’d left, he’d hugged her hard, whispering, “So proud of you, mama,” in her ear, and she’d cried too. Not because of hormones but because of happiness so profound she couldn’t articulate it. And she’d gotten to this place of love and new life because of his help.

Two days later, the world as they knew it fell apart. 

“Does your leg hurt?” Maddie pressed, carefully. 

“It’s fine,” Buck said, which meant "yes." His words were precariously measured as if the wrong one would destroy his hard-won composure. 

Maddie shook the large, calloused hands that dwarfed her own. “Talk to me, Evan.” 

Buck was this alter ego her little brother had created in the response to a confusing and sometimes cruel world. Buck was the armor. Evan was the heart.

Buck’s chin wobbled, and he licked his eyes, eyes still cast downward. “Today was awful. Dead bodies and trapped women and so much damage...but it was still the best day we’ve had in weeks,” Buck admitted, “because they had a chance to fight. We know how to pull people from buildings or secure an unsteady vehicle...or treat _c-crush injuries._ But we can’t treat this virus. We can’t do anything. We can’t help them. We can’t even be there when they die,” Buck scrubbed angrily at his leaking eyes, leg bouncing up and down with anxiety and grief. 

Maddie didn’t have words or a solution. No one did. She’d taken the calls of wheezing, terrified people, and while every other situation had protocols and precedent and tips to save lives, there was nothing for this evil illness that had swept across the globe. 

So she held him instead, pulling his head down to her shoulder, and wrapping him up in her arms just like she did when he was small and scared and struggling with things he couldn’t articulate. 

Buck tried to push away, claiming he needed a shower, but she held on. “I’m wearing two masks. I’m a mama bear, Buck. Just hold on to me.” 

Maddie wasn’t sure how long they stayed like that, wrapped up in each other, trying not to succumb to the unknown, both grieving for what they lost and for the world they used to know. 

She felt the thrilling plink of bubbles from within. The softest reminder that life will always endure. 

Maddie untangled an arm from the bulk of her little brother and placed it on her rounded belly. “I don’t know if you can feel it yet...but…”

Buck sat up straight, eyes glitteringly wide. There was another strange movement that felt like that slide of wings and his face split into an awed smile, all teeth and newfound tears. Of wonder instead of grief. “Is that…?”

“Yeah.” 

He placed his other hand on the globe of her belly as if to measure its size, how much she had changed. “It’s really happening, huh?” 

Maddie nodded. She was still in disbelief herself, even though she’d struggled through a month of horrific morning sickness and her center of gravity changed by the minute. “No one is okay, right now, and that’s okay. You can talk to me...or anyone when you need to but we’re all still here and there is a light at the end of his tunnel.” 

Mischief flashed in Buck’s eyes, and he took one more reverent moment with her belly, giggling as the little one inside moved again, and then he scooted back on the bench and put on his mask. The members of the 118 straggled outside with chairs and coils of old hoses and they sat in a socially distanced circle, sharing stories and company. 

Ever so often, Buck would reach out and touch her belly, fingers drumming against the firm skin as if to reassure the little one inside that the world would be better when they arrived. He'd be sure of it.

  
_Fin._   
  
  
  
  



End file.
